The lonely and restless wife is a common trope in film. We've seen it in Unfaithful, Revolutionary Road, andNotes on a Scandal, to name a few examples. But while these characters are often bored, their stories are almost never boring. She usually spends her idle time participating in activities that straddle the line between unbridled fun and criminal activity. In The Kindergarten Teacher, it is most certainly the latter. In this film, however, the protagonist's worst crime is the exploitation of a child of color. And yet, this travesty goes entirely unmentioned in the film; it is but a tool for advancing the plot, a stepping stone on the path to the white protagonist's redemption. As a black woman, this was the first thing I saw — and the last thing I remembered — about the film, and it irked me.

The Kindergarten Teacher, which was adapted from the original Israeli movie of the same name, begins with a familiar story: Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a married mother of two rebellious teenage children who disregard her every word. Her husband, Grant (Michael Chernus), is a loving father and companion who, like Lisa, has resolved himself to the monotony of daily life. When Lisa tells him she's started taking a poetry class to fill her idle time, he merely flashes an empty smile. The trouble is that she's not a very good poet — even her instructor tells her so. But Jimmy (Parker Sevak), a 5-year-old student of Indian descent in her kindergarten class, is. Lisa decides to write down some of the child's unrefined prose and present it as her own. Her teacher loves it. What begins as genuine admiration of her young student's talent quickly turns into a reckless hijacking of it.

In the film, writer/director Sara Colangelo asks the viewer to ponder whether one can appreciate someone else's work while simultaneously using it for your own gain. That's a fine question to ask, but in this case, it reveals a huge blind spot for Colangelo because it ignores Jimmy's race. As a white female filmmaker, perhaps she simply chose not to confront an area she might have been unfamiliar with. But Lisa's audacity to use her listlessness to justify taking advantage of a defenseless student whose ethnicity likely already disenfranchises him betrays an immense level of white privilege on behalf of her character. Historically, there have been claims by parents that children of color receive a lesser education than their white counterparts — no matter their grades or behavior. But rather than the film acknowledging Jimmy's statistical marginalization as a child of color in the American school system, his character's perspective is usurped by Lisa's own desperation to find success even if it means exploiting a young talent.

Lisa's white female gaze, directed through the lens of Colangelo's, does a disservice to many viewers of color whose experiences more closely parallel that of Jimmy. I grew up in the public school system, where educators would often treat students of color differently. I cringed watching Lisa deliberately use her power to suppress the talent of a child she is supposed to be amplifying. While there is a scene later in the film when she finally allows Jimmy to present his own work at her class recital, even then she showcases him not as a talented child, but like a trophy she's proud to pull out of her pocket. Rather than speaking for itself, his talent is a representation of her own merit.

While it's totally understandable that Lisa, as the protagonist, is the centerpiece of the story, there should be some responsibility on behalf of the filmmaker to illuminate Jimmy's perspective, which could further serve to make what Lisa does even that more detestable while still sparking debate. Lisa's obsessive need for Jimmy to somehow validate her worth escalates to the point where she kidnaps him in a wild attempt to win back his good graces after his dad removes him from her school. This effectively diminishes Jimmy's point of view so that the question becomes less about him as a victim of educational theft — heightened by the fact that he's a child of color — and more about him being a mere consequence of Lisa's downward spiral. We're told this is a story about the maddening depth of a white woman's idleness, and this negates how her actions harm anyone on her path — a young boy of color in particular.

All too often white feminism, as portrayed on the silver screen, highlights female complexity at the detriment of non-white characters. The Kindergarten Teacher is, unfortunately, no exception.

Throughout each of its four films, The Purge has made one message very clear: White men in power will do anything to maintain it.

To that end: The government's New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) party, tired of co-existing with disenfranchised, mostly-minority poor people, has instituted an annual holiday, grossly called Purge Night. The holiday, on which vicious murder is not only legal but encouraged, allows the mostly white men of the NFFA to maintain their lock on power.

The politics of this wildly dystopian universe, which highlight unsettling truths about the way white supremacy enables abusive behavior, have been persistent in each installment: The Purge; The Purge: Anarchy; The Purge: Election Year; and this summer's prequel, The First Purge. We see seemingly upstanding citizens, most of whom are powerful white men or those incentivized by a white government, turn into the most abominable versions of themselves as they terrorize oppressed people of color, triggered by a rage they've been given the right to indulge in. It's become an event complete with horrifying masks, machetes, machine guns, armored trucks, and celebratory gore.

But the eponymous TV adaptation, which premiered Sept. 4, flips that script. Rather than focusing on violence by white citizens, this time around one of the killers is a black woman, whose rage is just as lethal as her white counterparts' — and it's aimed directly at everything they represent.

When we first meet Jane (Amanda Warren) in the pilot episode of The Purge, she seems unsuspecting. She's successful by most standards, with a high-powered corporate job leading a large staff in what she considers one of the "safest" buildings in the city with one of the most expensive and dedicated security teams. She's so confident, in fact, that she chooses to forego a quiet evening at her home on Purge Night to work in the office with her team.

By the second episode, which aired Tuesday night with the title "Take What's Yours," the layers of Jane's backstory are peeled away to reveal a long history of being marginalized at her company. She's constantly having to squirm away from her boss David's (William Baldwin) unwanted sexual advances, and she's been long overlooked for partner. Her talent is clear — even David says so — but the glass ceiling remains as low as ever for her, and she's understandably grown weary. After years of resisting David's persistent flirtation, watching him move on to younger, more eager white women employees willing to do whatever it takes to rise up the ranks hasn't made her experience at the company any more tolerable. She's tired — or, as civil rights heroine Fannie Lou Hamer once said, she's "sick and tired of being sick and tired."

So, this Purge Night, which will span for all of the series' 10 episodes, Jane has decided to take power back by force. Tonight, she plans to pay to have David murdered.

Jane has been harboring resentment for years, but as potentially the only black woman at her company, she can't express even justifiable frustration for fear of being labeled "the angry black woman" — a stereotype so many are forced to confront in the workplace. As a result, she's gone unheard and been left powerless in a corporate structure that was not built for her to succeed in the first place.

That's a lot to suppress for so many years, and the burden has clearly crushed much of Jane's mental and emotional state. It's brought her to the point where she is questioning her own morality and resorting to cold-blooded murder. She is taking control the only way she can, by inserting herself into a bloody political structure where she can for once end up the victor.

But Jane wrestles with her decision up until the time comes for her to hand the money off to her assassin, who's also a woman of color. Does having David murdered make her just as heinous as all the other purgers? Is this really the only way to alleviate the rage that's been building up inside of her for years? Jane contends with these questions aloud as she tries to explain to her hired assassin — whose name is intentionally undisclosed — in their first meeting that this is really her only choice. She starts rattling off longtime grievances at her job, finally daring to vocalize these issues in front of someone who might actually be able to commiserate.

Never mind that the assassin is far from interested — this is a business transaction, after all. For Jane, this is a time for her to validate what she is feeling, and at last give herself the permission to go against every principle she has stood on in order to confront white supremacy in its most anarchic state. Her morals are pushed aside in favor of a much greater, more sinister outcome. Notably, Jane's decision to have David murdered positions her, for the first time ever, on the same level as her white counterparts.

The Purge franchise has always had a knack for deconstructing humans' motivations for violence in an increasingly politically charged society. With this latest offering, the brand has gone a step further, highlighting the power disparity that exists when it comes to race and crystallizing how that can so easily lead to a person who's been sidelined for so long becoming completely unhinged. Through Jane's story, The Purge illuminates how this imbalance directly affects black women — and gives them the authority to finally manifest a rage they've long withheld, in a way that's frighteningly familiar to their white peers.

There's a moment in Blindspotting when, if you were just tuning in, you might assume that an unhinged black man is about to shoot a police officer in cold blood. Collin (Daveed Diggs, most famous for originating the role of Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton on Broadway), donning a tanktop and baggy jeans while rapping about murder and privilege, is pointing a gun at a white cop (Ethan Embry) who is shaking with fear. Collin is enraged and, despite his friend Miles (Rafael Casal) — who is white — pleading with him to stop, Collin refuses to put down his weapon.

But appearances can be deceiving. There's far more to this standoff than an uninitiated viewer would infer. In reality, this scene takes place near the end of the film — and as the plot unfolds to lead us to this breaking point, it challenges its audience to overcome long-ingrained stereotypes that a black man is automatically a menacing figure.

Blindspotting, a film co-written by Diggs and Casal and opening Friday, viscerally confronts how differently race and gentrification affect the lives of a black man and a white man — two longtime friends. It purposefully subverts some of social justice's biggest tropes to compel its audience to examine how our evolving neighborhoods affect how we see ourselves and those around us. In the scene described above, for example, the action isdeliberately set up for the optics to be blurred. It forces the viewers to evaluate what brought Collin, just three days away from completing his year of parole after serving time in prison for instigating a petty fight, to the point where he'd risk his freedom for the life of one cop.

Viewers know the answer from earlier in the film: This is the same police officer who Collin saw shoot and kill an unarmed black man in the middle of the street with no hesitation — the same one who boldly threw him a cold glare as he left the lifeless body on the ground. Since his Oakland, California, neighborhood has been recently gentrified, Collin, who is known to bust out a few rhymes as he walks along the sidewalk, is now seen as an outsider in front of his own house — like a criminal who doesn't belong. And yet, this cop strolls onto the block, commits murder, and returns to his life as if nothing happened.

It's a frustrating thought for Collin to live with, one that is compounded by the fact that everything he knows has changed since he was released from prison. More profoundly, the things he once took comfort in now present conflicts for him. He's even looking at his best friend Miles, who regularly visited him in jail, in a different way. While it was Collin who threw the first punch in the fight that landed him behind bars, it was Miles who beat the man to a bloody pulp — and who didn't face so much as court-ordered community service. Collin bore the brunt of the punishment, and he is the one who has to live with the label of ex-convict, having lost everything (including his girlfriend Val, played by Janina Gavankar) in the process.

By contrast, Collin was by Miles' side when he married the beautiful Ashley (Jasmine Cephas Jones, who also starred in Hamilton's original Broadway run as Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds), a black woman, and became a father to their son Ziggy (Ziggy Baitinger). Collin has watched Miles assume a black dialect peppered with "street" slang and walk with the swagger of a black man. It is Miles who has the confidence of a man who is supposed to be in this neighborhood, not Collin.

Collin is gripped with fear that at any moment he's going to be sent back to jail for something inconsequential. He works hard to maintain the image of a respectable black man; he makes sure he doesn't push any buttons when interacting with customers at work, and he is adamant about making it home before his 11 p.m. curfew to comply with his probation. Miles runs through the Oakland streets with reckless abandon and even brings a gun into the home he shares with his young family.

It's not until Collin witnesses Miles pummel someone else — this time, a black man who calls him out for appropriating the culture — that his frustration and internal rage burst. He knows that he is the one who would be hauled back to jail for yet another crime that Miles committed, and it tips him over the edge.

Once the two are safely away from the fight scene, Collin confronts Miles about his white privilege, which throws Miles off guard. Miles isn't prepared for Collin to interrogate him about why he talks the way he does, about whether he only visited him in jail out of guilt, about why he doesn't just go ahead and use the N-word since he's been pretending to be black for so long anyway. Specifically, Collin asks, why won't Miles just call Collin the N-word now, when he's so mad at Collin for leaving him in the middle of this latest fight?

Miles responds that he doesn't use that word — that he would never use that word. But he is visibly fighting the impulse to drop the slur, in the heat of his anger, in the direction of his best friend. This singular word is apparently where he draws the line.

Miles is so consumed with the daily task of cultural appropriation that he doesn't even see how it's affected Collin, how his actions have contributed to his friend being further marginalized and criminalized in a system of white supremacy — where even actual white criminals like himself, who pretend to be black, prevail over him. Though Miles says that he appropriates to survive the Oakland streets as a white man, it's a meaningless excuse that serves only to elevate himself by devaluing people like Collin. Collin knows this, and Miles tries to understand, but ultimately it is the former who has to grapple with this truth every day.

So, when we meet Collin at the home of the aforementioned police officer, he is clenched with such intense feelings of despair and utter rage that he picks up the officer's gun and aims it at him. We aren't sure whether he will actually pull the trigger, or whether he's just trying to scare the man. But we know that living in a constant state of fear and anger has cornered him into almost becoming the criminal he's been perceived to be all along.

This moment perfectly crystallizes the film's overall message: Collin is not a thug. He's not even a threat. But the fact that he's made to be one under the oppressive weight of white supremacy is the real crime.

You can picture it without much effort: a rusty bed, a young woman in distress, a callous doctor who points out the absence of the responsible man. Since Dirty Dancing deployed the abortion storyline in 1987, not muchhaschanged.

That's what makes the most recent episode of Claws, the bombastic series centering on a five-woman squad of manicurists juggling their salon business with an increasingly outrageous money-laundering side hustle, so special. "Cracker Casserole," the second episode of the show's second season, subverts each of these long-held abortion tropes with its storyline centered on stripper-turned-nail technician Virginia (Karreuche Tran), who opts to have an abortion with the full support of her loving boyfriend Dean (Harold Perrineau).

Virginia isn't distressed. She's not alone. Her character enjoys a healthy dose of sexual pleasure and isn't slut-shamed for it. As she says it, she and Dean "just made a mistake." And Dean, who is autistic, agrees: "We're not ready to have a kid." It's as plain as that — and it's yet another example of how Claws manages to straddle the line between ridiculous and sincere while earnestly defying stereotypes.

These are two adults making a mutual, intensely personal decision. The two opinions they deemed to matter were theirs and theirs alone, and through that they felt at ease with the outcome. Though Dean's sister Desna (Niecy Nash) does have some choice words about Virginia "riding bareback" with her brother, there's enough love and respect between the two women — as well as among the rest of their squad — that she stands by Virginia's decision. Their friend Quiet Ann (Judy Reyes) even accompanies Virginia and Dean to Planned Parenthood, rather than shy away into detached support.

True to Claws' form, "Cracker Casserole" even manages to infuse a little levity into a daunting event like having to navigate through a crowd of angry protesters just to get to the front door of the clinic. Clearly underestimating the mob, Virginia merely opts for flat shoes instead of her usual sky-high heels, while Quiet Ann and Dean are wearing hockey masks and toting water guns as they step outside. It's not until this moment that Virginia realizes that her decision to terminate her pregnancy is now subjected to the court of public opinion, which extends far beyond her friends at the salon.

But while the audience may be struck by this recognition showing on Virginia's face, what we hear playing throughout the scene — with the volume turned way up to drown out the yells from the crowd — is rapper Awkwafina's feminist anthem, "My Vag." The juxtaposition of Awkwafina's unapologetically vulgar and decidedly womanly bragging with the suffocating judgment from the assembled crowd illustrates the genuine combination of doubt and audacity a woman is forced to feel when she has an abortion. Even Virginia, who feels confident in her decision, is expected to justify her rights to a sea of combative strangers. The effect is arresting.

What's more, the whole scene lasts but a few minutes. That's one of the most interesting things about the episode: that it doesn't feel the need to spend a ton of time elevating the significance of Virginia having an abortion. Instead, it is while Virginia is quietly awaiting the procedure in the hospital when the episode really shines, as the rest of her crew launches into a conversation, told through a grid screen, about their own experiences with abortion and unplanned pregnancies. Polly (Carrie Preston) reveals that her dad raped her babysitter, who then had an abortion. Quiet Ann laments that she got pregnant when she was 14 and her parents gave her baby away. Jennifer (Jenn Lyon) says she had two abortions and "didn't think twice about it."

The point is that unplanned pregnancy and abortion is common, and defies age, class, race, and circumstance.

Virginia is a half-Asian-American, half-African-American ex-stripper who, by typical screen guidelines, should have been ostracized, stereotyped, and shamed into oblivion. Just seeing a woman of color with a supportive man by her side experience an abortion onscreen is a profound statement, let alone to see it done with such nuance. Virginia's relationship with Dean remains airtight even after the abortion — so much so that after the procedure, he proposes to her with a ring pop. It's an equally awkward and surprising moment, as Claws chooses to show a woman's life immediately progressing into genuine happiness after she goes through an abortion, rather than have her be haunted by her decision for some indeterminate amount of time.

In fact, Virginia is in such a great mood after the procedure that she struts through the still-steady mob outside the clinic and announces that she and Dean are getting married. Thinking that the news means Virginia changed her mind about the abortion, the protesters rejoice — until she proudly states, "We still D&C'ed that, bitch!" All the while, she's sucking on her symbolic ring pop.

For Claws, a series that has consistently given agency to characters that rarely get voices on screen, "Cracker Casserole" is characteristically bold and provocative. Virginia isn't perfect — but she's not a damsel either, and that's what makes her story worth telling.